Welcome to the Jewish Book Council blog. We hope you'll join us as we venture into the world of Jewish books, exploring questions related to what makes a book Jewish, trends in the Jewish literary scene, interesting new books to come across our desk, emerging authors, interviews, and more. Feel free to write to us with your opinions and ideas. We'd love to hear from you! All posts can now be viewed directly on the main JBC website here: http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/_blog/The_ProsenPeople/

Joanna Smith Rakoff: The Smell of Old England

In her last blog, Joanna Smith Rakoff wrote about a family “more identifiably old American than Jewish.”
Here in the U.S., Margaret Drabble’s novels are nowhere near as widely read as those of her older sister, A.S. Byatt, perhaps because they, to a one, seek to explore -– or, perhaps, “interrogate” might be a better word — contemporary British society, in rather the same way Philip Roth probes the uncomfortable corners of the American psyche. Continue reading here.